Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

Eighteen cargo transports, thirty-wheel monsters, coughing blue exhaust from their vertical pipe-stacks, ground down the red-rock pass in low gear. The tractor units at the front of each payload wagon were monsters, armoured cabs of scorched metal rattling on top of a huge engine unit, glaring forward through multiple fog-lamp eyes and grinning fly-flecked smiles of fender bars, radiator grilles and spiked running boards, flanking the massive transports were the outriders, rushing through the dust on track-bikes and in armoured cars.

Palapr Tuvant, transport driver, Caligula born and bred, wrestled with the half-moon wheel of the convoy's lead freighter and glanced around at his co-driver. Hewn Milloom was looking out of the cab window, occasionally regarding his chronometer.

They were both wringing with sweat, entombed by the heat from the roaring engine under their feet. Milloom had dropped the window armour panels and opened the metal vents in the hope of washing them with cool breeze from outside. But the surface temperature out in the deadlands was pushing forty degrees, and they baked. Occasionally, sprays of hot engine oil spurted back from the leaky head gasket and spattered in at them through the forward grille-screen.

Milloom sat back in his ripped leather seat and looked up at the cab's ceiling hatch. 'He's still up there?'

Tuvant nodded, wrenching the wheel. Both of them were all too used to the juddering, shaking motion of the vehicle. 'Probably sticking his head out of the turret like a dog, enjoying the rush of air.'

Milloom chuckled. 'Kec, but he's a dumb-ass, right? Never stood in line for brains.'

Tuvant nodded. Typical Guard, all muscle and no head. Where the kec were they when the hives fell? Huh? Answer me that?'

'In a troop-ship in transit,' Trooper Bragg answered plainly, his huge bulk clambering down the rungs from the top hatch to join them. He stood at the back of the cab, holding onto a roll-bar for support as the tractor lurched over uneven ground. 'Colonel-Commissar Gaunt said we got here as fast as we could.' He smiled sheepishly at the two-man driving team.

'I'm sure he did,' Tuvant murmured.

Bragg edged forward, using handholds to stop himself from falling. 'We're making good time, aren't we?'

'Brilliant time,' Milloom replied, turning away from the big Ghost. 'Calphernia Station will rejoice when we arrive.'

'I'm sure it will,' Bragg smiled, sinking into the bench seat behind the driver's position. 'That'll be good. When the colonel-commissar ordered me to command this convoy detail, I said to him I will get it through on time, trust me, colonel-commissar. I will. And we are, aren't we?'

'Yes, we are. Right on time,' Tuvant said.

'Good. That's good. The colonel-commissar will be pleased.'

Milloom muttered something unflattering about the high and mighty colonel-commissar.

'What did you say?' Bragg asked sharply.

Milloom stiffened. He looked across at Tuvant. They'd been in the company of this huge guardsman for maybe three hours all told, and had so far reckoned him to be dim-witted and slow. Of course, his sheer bulk was impressive, but they had felt confident about laughing at him behind his back. Now Milloom tensed, feeling perhaps he'd gone too far, feeling the giant behind them might suddenly unleash his undoubted physical power in a mindless tantrum.

'I… I didn't say anything.'

'You did. You said something about my colonel-commissar. Something bad.'

Milloom turned slowly to face the huge Tanith. 'I didn't mean anything. I was just joking.'

'So it was a bad thing. An insult.'

'Yes, but just a joke.' Milloom tensed, expecting the worst, reaching his left hand down beside his seat for the axle-bar he kept stowed there.

'That's okay,' Bragg said lightly, turning to look out of a window. 'Everyone is entitled to their opinion. The colonel-commissar told us that.'

Milloom sat back and exchanged knowing grins with the driver. A total dummy, they agreed wordlessly.

'So,' Tuvant asked, teasing, looking at Bragg in the rear-view mirror, 'you do everything this colonel-commissar tells you?'

'Of course!' the giant replied brightly. 'He's the colonel. And the commissar. We're his men. We're Imperial Guard. Tanith First-and-Only. We're loyal to the Emperor and we do everything the colonel-commissar tells us.'

'What if he told you to jump off a cliff?' Milloom laughed, conspiratorially sharing the baiting with Tuvant.

Then we'd jump off the cliff. Was that a trick question?'

The convoy rolled on into the deadlands. It had assembled that morning on a stained curtain road outside the half-burned ruin of the Aurelian Hive City, where a second front of Imperial Guard had seized control after the main assault on Nero Hive. The mammoth Imperium victory was in no doubt, but still pockets of enemy soldiers held out, fighting a lingering war of wastage and attrition to wear out the lines ol supply.

The Imperial Guard closed in en masse to root out and eradicate all remnants of resistance, and the work to rebuild Caligula began. What resources were available – and despite everything Aurelian Hive was rich in storehouses – had to be redistributed. The convoy marked the first attempt to convey relief supplies to the stricken Hive Calphernia. That meant a two hundred kilometre crossing of the battlewaste recently dubbed ''the deadlands''.

Six convoys had departed Aurelian Hive that dawn. Four were headed to Nero Hive, one to Tiberius and one to Calphernia. Gaunt's Ghosts, the Tanith First, were given the protection duty. It was agreed that the run to Calphernia was the most dangerous, as it crossed the territories of bandits – ex-hive workers who had fled the war and set themselves up as feudal warlords in the waste. Not a single relief vehicle had made it through in the last six weeks and the rumours told of thousands of rebels, stockpiling weapons. Some even whispered that Chaos powers were involved.

Everyone, including Bragg himself, was amazed when Gaunt chose Bragg to command the defence of the Calphernia convoy. Gaunt had ignored all the protests and taken the bemused Bragg into his command bunker to brief him.

Caober, Rawne, Larkin and the other Ghosts decided that Gaunt's choice simply represented an acceptance that the Calphernia convoy wouldn't get through. It was a write-off and Gaunt wasn't going to waste any decent commander to such long odds.

'And so our caring commissar shows his true colours!' Rawne had hissed, playing with the hilt of his silver Tanith dagger. Others fidgetted nervously, unhappy with what seemed to be going on but unwilling to question Gaunt's authority directly.

Bragg simply grinned at the honour bestowed upon him. It seemed he missed the irony. He was oblivious to the fact that he was already given up as dead. Rawne spat in the dust.

At the behest of the men, Corbec had approached Gaunt fiercely, demanding to know why Gaunt had been so callous as to deem Bragg expendable. 'Sir, with me or Hasker or Lerod at the helm, we might get a chance to drive that convoy through. Don't throw it away, don't waste Bragg—'

'I know what I'm doing,' Gaunt had replied curtly, sending the proud Bragg and seventy other Ghosts off on the detail from which everyone was sure no one would come back.

The convoy rumbled down a wide-bottomed crevasse and began to cross a cracked, red dust-plain of baked earth. Heat shimmered up, distorting the horizons. Outrider one roared ahead of the convoy, a track-bike driven by Corporal Meryn with Trooper Caffran manning the pintle-mounted twin auto-cannons in the rear. Both had their stealth cloaks wrapped up around their mouths against the heat and dust, and wore filmed, heat-crazed goggles.

Meryn heaved the cycle to a halt on a rise, the convoy a kilometre behind them, and pulled down his swaddling dust-veils to spit and cough.